CHAPTER 27: THE NON-HUMAN
5th Floor. Office.
The hallway outside was a wreckage of splintered wood and cracked concrete.
The masked man known as Rodem had his left hand gripped around a heavy blade, while his right hand's fingers were buried deep into the concrete wall. He hung there in a half-crouch, supporting his entire massive frame with the strength of a single arm.
"Hah... huff... hah..."
Clouds of hot vapor hissed from the ventilation slits of his mask.
His posture was a defiance of human anatomy, radiating a level of primal violence and predatory aggression that made even the world-weary Yagyo pause.
"Hahaha! Look at him go!"
Seeing the flicker of concern on the Referee's face, Q-Taro's ego swelled. He leaned into the comms, barking at the monster in the hallway. "Rodem! Head to the sixth floor first. Cull those three useless failures!"
"Wait! Hold on!"
A frantic, desperate scream erupted over Q-Taro's comms channel.
It was the mercenary from the sixth floor—the small one whose neck Ren had partially broken. He had just regained consciousness and heard Q-Taro's order. Ignoring the fact that his lower body was paralyzed, he scrambled for his headset.
"Old man! This wasn't the deal!"
The mere thought of "Rodem" coming for him sent the mercenary into a state of total panic. "We don't need him yet! I'll kill them myself, I swear! Just tell that thing to stop!"
"You're a pathetic, irredeemable fool," Q-Taro's voice went cold. "You've been broken and beaten, yet you still think you have the leverage to negotiate?"
The mercenary gasped into the mic. "You don't understand! They're too careful! And that kid... he's not a normal fighter, he's a damn superhero! We can't—"
"Which is why," Q-Taro interrupted with a snicker, "I've sent you some reinforcements. You should be thanking me!"
"Wait—"
Before he could finish, Q-Taro flipped the toggle, cutting the sixth floor out of the loop.
Cold sweat drenched the small mercenary. He ground his teeth and dragged his useless legs toward the corner, frantically switching his radio to the private frequency of the "Slick-back" mercenary that Ren's group had taken hostage.
"Oi! Can you hear me?!"
The line connected. "We need to talk! I know the traps on floors one, two, and three! I can guide you out! Take me with you, turn me over to the cops, I don't care! Just get us out of this building before—"
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
Heavy, rhythmic, and incredibly fast footsteps echoed from the stairwell.
The small mercenary's eyes bulged. A monstrous silhouette rounded the corner, sprinting through the darkness of the corridor like a demon from a nightmare. It was coming straight for him.
"No... NO!"
The weapons Baku had discarded were out of reach. He fumbled for a knife on his belt.
But it was too late.
WHOOSH!
Rodem blurred past him. The combat knife in the monster's hand flashed once.
SHLICK!
The mercenary's reaching arm suddenly went limp. A deep, jagged gash had been opened at the shoulder, leaving the limb attached by nothing but a thin flap of skin and muscle.
"Agh... h-h..."
The man was so consumed by terror he couldn't even manage a scream.
Rodem didn't finish him immediately. Under Q-Taro's remote direction, the monster stepped over to the two unconscious mercenaries nearby. He raised a massive, combat-booted foot.
CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH!
He systematically stomped their heads into the concrete until they were nothing but a crimson slurry of bone and brain matter. Only when the floor was a ruined mess did he stop.
Rodem turned back to the small mercenary. The body camera on his harness adjusted, giving Q-Taro a front-row seat to the man's final moments.
ZIP!
Rodem used a reverse grip to draw the blade across the man's throat.
A geyser of hot blood sprayed from the carotid artery, painting the wall a deep, wet red. The mercenary let out one final, gurgling wheeze before his eyes glazed over.
Rodem didn't linger. He didn't head down the stairs. Instead, he turned and sprinted back up toward the roof.
Q-Taro cackled with delight. "Perfect, Rodem! The remaining targets are on the fourth floor. Take the 'shortcut'!"
4th Floor.
Ren, Akagi, Baku, and Kaji were currently holding the slicked-back mercenary at knifepoint, preparing to move toward the third-floor stairwell. Suddenly, the comms unit on the mercenary's vest crackled with the sounds of his comrade's panicked screams... followed by the sickening sounds of the slaughter.
Then, silence.
"..."
The captured mercenary turned pale as a ghost. "Oi! Let me go! I won't fight you, I swear! We have to run! He is coming! He's going to kill us all!"
Baku's brow furrowed. "By 'He,' do you mean the masked man from Q-Taro's office?"
"That's him! That's the monster!"
The mercenary started jogging toward the stairs, looking over his shoulder every second. "I'll show you every trap! Just move! Move now!"
The sheer, raw terror in the professional soldier's voice was infectious. Even Kaji felt his hair stand on end.
Then, a voice screamed in Ren's earpiece. It was Fusui Kure, her voice higher and more panicked than Ren had ever heard it.
{ REN-CHIN! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?! }
Fusui couldn't find the words to describe what she was seeing through her scope.
A massive, masked figure had just burst through the roof access door of the Kujo Building. In his hand was a spool of industrial-grade power cable. He looped it once around the reinforced iron railing, gripped the other end, and launched himself off the roof into the open air.
The force of his jump was so immense that several of the steel railing bars snapped and bent under his boots.
"!?"
The sequence was too fast, too violent to be human. Even in the Kure Clan—a family of biological outliers—Fusui had never seen anything like this.
Instinctively, she triggered her [Removal]. The veins around her eyes bulged as she pushed her dynamic vision to its absolute limit.
Her black-and-white eyes tracked the blur, finally locking onto Rodem as he plummeted.
A sliver of her killing intent reached across the gap between the buildings. Mid-air, Rodem's head snapped toward her. His eyes, visible through the mask, locked onto hers.
For that one heartbeat, Fusui felt as if a cold scythe had been pressed against her throat. Her heart skipped a beat. She felt a primal, biological urge to flee—an "Apex Predator" warning that had never been triggered before, not even by her older brother, Raian Kure.
This wasn't a man. It was another species entirely.
She forgot about the "Support Contract." She was about to pull the trigger to eliminate a threat to her own existence.
But in the next instant, Rodem tightened his grip on the cable. Using the roof connection as a pivot point, he swung his massive body in a wide, parabolic arc back toward the building's exterior.
"Reflexes like a...!?"
Fusui realized his goal too late. She couldn't get a shot off through the concrete. She screamed into the mic:
{ REN-CHIN, GET AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS! DIVE! }
CRASH!
At the exact moment Fusui's warning reached him, the reinforced glass of a fourth-floor office window exploded inward.
Rodem swung through the opening like a wrecking ball. He landed on the carpeted floor, his momentum carrying him forward. Before anyone could react, he slammed into the interior door.
BOOM!
The door was kicked clean off its hinges. It flew across the room and "pinned" the slicked-back mercenary against the far wall like a luckless mosquito. A sickening squelch followed as the man's ribcage collapsed under the impact.
Rodem stood in the center of the room, his mask dripping with glass dust, staring at Ren, Akagi, and Baku.